More Nikko

Today we went down to "touristy Nikko" as Scout calls it, which is the area closer to the UNESCO world heritage site. But we managed to find some hidden gems away from the crowds...and by hidden gems I mean they were clearly labeled on the map with along a suggested "walking tour" but I guess because its away from the UNESCO temples no one cared. We liked it.

So, for geography, there's a wooded hill area about 2 km away from the Nikko JR station with about 4 or 5 temples and shrines there. We got dropped off at Shinkyo bridge over the Daiya River, which looks like this:

But we didn't cross that because you have to pay money; we crossed the big ugly regular bridge where cars go.We marched a bit up into the temples area, but there were a lot of people there so we didn't really stick around for the full experience. Plus each temple has a ticket for entry individually and we are miserly with our funds...

Here are a couple pics from up in the area though...

We descended and after wandering around to find a bathroom, discovered we were at the start of the red line on our map which was a different walking tour. This lead along upriver to see some sites, I guess but we were pretty happy right off the bat because the river was pretty. Here we dipped our feet in its freezing currents...

 ...and enjoyed the long parade of these statues with their red knit hats and bibs.

 I actually took lots of photos today, so maybe I should've uploaded more of them, but I have to do the uploading from my phone and then the writing on my laptop and I am generally too laze to switch devices. Hence why my blog isn't very popular I suppose, not willing to sacrifice to achieve higher quality!

Anyway, here's the last two photos. Christian "meditating" (totally not posing for the camera) alongside the river.

 And then at last we cross this other bridge that I forget the name of...and I can't Google it because any bridge related search in the area will point you inevitably towards the famous Shinkyo sacred bridge from earlier.

 Eventually we wound our way back into town, got some boxed lunch food from the groecery store for dinner and awaited our 4:30 pickup.

Back at the hostel we thought we'd take a dip in the river, when a sudden downpour of rain began! So, already in our swim gear, we thought "why not" and went for it anyway. But the river water was so cold on our feet compared to the rain, we ended up just standing in the rain for a while which got us just as wet as diving would have.